Moving Forward
by Cardboard Bike
Summary: Iruka's short life has been full of mistakes and he is constantly reminded of it. But maybe, just maybe, falling for Kakashi isn't a mistake.


_This is my original attempt at filling _XxnotsoinnocentXx_'s prompt which resulted in 'Happy Place'. Because of that there are some similar/same lines, but the overall tone is quite different. _

_Pre-Naruto series: Iruka 18, Kakashi 21. __**Contains**__**Graphic Sexual Content **__(which is neither fluffy or erotic) __**and Mild Angst.**_

**o0o**

Iruka either wants to laugh bitterly, or cry. As it is he does neither, because he is shinobi born and bred and well versed in keeping any sort of sorrow hidden.

He almost laughs at himself anyway. Even if there were someone else here they wouldn't be able to tell if he cried. The weather has aligned neatly with his mood and the rain is bucketing down. He'd neglected to tie his hair up when he'd left the house and now it sticks in straggly clumps to his narrow shoulders and plasters itself flat against his forehead. He is soaked to his very core, his clothes clinging like a second skin, but he doesn't even notice the cold anymore.

Sinking onto his knees in the grass, mindless of the mud brought about by the torrential rain, Iruka traces the first names he'd come to see on the stone in front of him. _Ka-san. Tou-san. _He wonders if his parents would be ashamed of him. He is eighteen now, after all. Most shinobi reach jōnin by this age, if they are ever going to. Iruka knows he will never become a jōnin, even though both his parents had passed the exam before they were the age he is now. He hates the sight, the smell, the taste of blood. Hates hurting anyone, let alone killing them. His sensei sees this as a weakness.

He moves his finger along the wet stone, blind to the mud seeping into the cotton of his pants and chilling his calves. _Kazuki. _Everyone had said he'd go far, be very successful and join the elite. Not like that Umino kid who could never manage to do anything right. He barely scraped by as a chūnin. Kazuki would have gone far, had he lived longer, Iruka is sure of that. He is also sure that the blame for Kazuki's death is placed firmly on his shoulders, because _he'd_ been the one ordered out on that mission.

He'd given it to Kazuki because his teammate had not-so-politely asked him to hand it over after finding out that the mission involved close contact for a prolonged period of time with a rich, beautiful young lady. Iruka, not the least bit interested in women, had given it to him without a fuss. Had he known it was a trap he might have taken it on himself. Useless Orphan Umino would have been much less missed than Golden Boy Kazuki-kun.

He feels nothing at the next name, if only because his whole body has frozen and he doesn't have the energy that strong emotions require. _Shigeo._ Shigeo had been a beautiful boy, with curly dark hair and long, thick lashes framing dark green eyes. His eyes had often been narrowed when he directed his gaze at Iruka, taking away their charm, his lips twisted into a sneer. _I don't want to work with Iruka-chan. My baby sister can perform better jutsu than him in her sleep._

When Iruka dreamed, Shigeo's lips said different things, performed different actions. Thinking back on it, Iruka realizes that Shigeo had probably been his first crush, and like all subsequent crushes he'd been a bad choice. Shigeo had died along with their sensei on a mission that Iruka had been too sick at the time to attend. He'd felt incrediblyguilty for a long time, up until the chūnin exam that he finally passed only to look out at the crowd to see no one cheering for him.

He feels different, suddenly, and only realizes why when a gruff voice says, "You're gonna get a cold sitting out here in the rain, kid."

Morino Ibiki stands over him with an umbrella, shielding him from the pelting rain. "Come on, you need to go home."

He holds out a large, scarred hand and Iruka grabs onto it, hauling himself onto shaky feet even though the last thing he wants is to go home. He knows he doesn't really have a choice now that Ibiki is here. The older man had been captured and tortured six months prior and Iruka, upon seeing how people turned away from him because of his numerous, vibrant scars, had taken it upon himself to attempt to befriend the man. Ibiki, amused and charmed by Iruka's stubborn naivety, had fitted himself into an almost older brother-like mold, never mentioning that he had lost a brother on the same night he'd gotten the majority of his scars.

"If you feel so bad that you're out here in the middle of the night then maybe it's time to talk to the Sandaime about a job change," Ibiki says as gently as he can.

"A change to what," Iruka says more bitterly than he'd intended. "A shinobi is a shinobi is a shinobi. If I'm not that then what am I?"

Ibiki sighs, clapping a hand on his shoulder so he can't run away and pulling him back towards Konoha. "There are a lot of jobs that require little to no fieldwork. My job, for instance. Most jobs in T and I, medic-nin, teachers, mission desk workers, Hokage's assistants – talk to the Sandaime, he's probably already got something sorted out for you."

'I wouldn't be any good at any of those either," Iruka says dejectedly. He'd _tried_ being optimistic, because he is naturally that way inclined anyway, and to most people he still seems perpetually happy. But when everyone close to you up and dies and everyone else just seems to ignore you because you have no natural talent a small part of you starts wondering whether maybe this is the time to just give up. And as time goes on that little part of you expands until it's too big for you to control or ignore.

Ibiki shrugs, and motions to his left. "Go on, get inside and have a hot shower. Do I need to come in and force you to do it?"

Iruka shakes his head.

"Good. Do you promise to at least talk to the Sandaime?"

Iruka nods obediently.

"Good. Now go." Ibiki prods him gently, directing him towards the door. Iruka stumbles, his limbs still not fully thawed, but does as he is bid, climbing the three familiar steps and fumbling in his pocket for the keys to his parents' house. He never calls it his house, or _home;_ he doesn't feel he has any right to. He hasn't lived up to his parents' expectations in any way and doesn't deserve to own what had once belonged to his mother and father. Sometimes he even feels like an intruder when he slips between the sheets of his childhood bed, an imposter just waiting to be kicked out by the Real Iruka, the one who made jōnin easily and didn't fuck up easy missions like the last one he'd been on.

He presses a hand firmly against his right shoulder in annoyance at himself, hitting the fresh kunai wound dead on and sending a lightning flare of pain down his chest to curdle somewhere near his stomach. It is a wound that should never have happened, would never had happened if he wasn't such a bumbling idiot. He is only glad that his chūnin-issue shirt covers it and Ibiki hadn't seen it.

Iruka pushes open the door and shoves off his sandals, not bothering to turn on the lights. His toes feel like they are being stabbed through by little shards of cracking ice as they hit the cold floorboards but he can't find it in himself to care.

"You've been out late." The voice is disapproving and hard, and Iruka wishes as hard as he can that it is just his overactive imagination.

"I was visiting my parents," Iruka mumbles after a short silence, knowing full well that the voice is 100% real. He keeps his gaze on the floorboards in front of his feet anyway. _If I can't see him, he's not really there. He'll go away._

"I wanted you, and you weren't here," the voice says accusingly.

Iruka slowly lifts his eyes from the floor past the bare feet with the long, delicate toes, past the hastily wrapped calves and jōnin-pants-clad thighs, past the pale chest – all lean, tight muscle – with arms folded tightly across it to the scowling, mask-covered face. _Kakashi._ His latest in an ever-growing line of mistakes.

Hatake Kakashi had been a project for him, at the start, similar to Ibiki. The Hatake name – of the father and the son – had been something thrown around his family dinner table on a nightly basis when he was small. _Have you seen what Sakumo-san has done with his child,_ his mother would say, _I hear he's a chūnin already._

_I wonder if our Iruka will ever be like that, _his father would muse, and his mother would shake her head and laugh.

He'd always considered Hatake Kakashi to simply embody that which he could never achieve, so when he'd seen Kakashi standing in front of the memorial stone like every other person, offering his apologies to the dead, he'd been shocked to his core. Kakashi was just a normal person, after all.

After that he'd kept an eye out for the silver-haired jōnin wherever he went, and slowly piecing together the facts he found he got a very lonely picture indeed. Summing up all his Umino courage Iruka had decided then and there that he'd become Kakashi's friend, because everybody needs somebody.

Kakashi had resisted Iruka's smiling attempts at friendship for a long time, turning down the iced drink in summer and the scarf in winter, sitting stoically silent through the shared meals he was forced to endure and ignoring Iruka's incessant chatter. Iruka had almost been about to give up, or at least change his strategy, when Kakashi had shown up at his house out of the blue, dripping blood and other unidentifiable substances on his carpet.

He should have said no that first time when the Copy-nin had pushed him down onto the bed wordlessly. He should have at least struggled. He didn't, because in that moment he'd looked up and seen that stormy gray eye filled with a desperate _need_ so strong and pure it made his heart ache. He had opened his legs in the hopes that the troubled older boy would open his heart. He is kind to a fault, and that has always been his weakness as well as his strength.

"I was at the memorial stone," Iruka repeats in a slightly stronger voice, his gaze firmly locked on Kakashi's one, baleful eye.

Kakashi moves, and Iruka is torn between thinking it is beautiful or frightening. His body is like liquid, rippling through shadows as if it would be easy for him simply to disappear into thin air. "But I wanted you."

The voice is right beside his ear, he can feel Kakashi's breath on his cheek and it makes his blood tingle with pinpricks of excitement, even though he wants nothing more than to be alone.

"I still want you."

What Kakashi wants is sex, it's what he always wants and why he comes here, because Iruka always gives it to him without question. Not tonight though. Tonight is the night Iruka will say no. "I'm tired. I'm going to go to sleep."

"But I want you," Kakashi tries again, and Iruka worries for a fleeting moment that the stronger nin might just force him to comply. He is gradually coming back to himself and starting to feel uneasy with the weight and the chill of the water in his clothes.

"We don't all get what we want, Kakashi-san," Iruka says with a sigh. He doesn't have the energy for this, not now, not with the burden of the failed mission settled firmly on his shoulders. Not when Kakashi himself is the epitome of everything his parents wanted him to be, everything he will never be. Not when the _want_ Kakashi's asking for isn't the _want_ that Iruka needs.

Kakashi stands in front of him, slate grey eye narrowed and flicking over his body contemplatively. "You're not happy."

Iruka laughs, a high-pitched, tinny sound that is bordering on hysteria. "What gives you that idea?"

Kakashi's eye narrows further. "You're supposed to be happy," he says accusingly. "You're not a jōnin."

Iruka raises an eyebrow. He has gotten quite good at deciphering the roots of Kakashi's usually warped logic, but that one is beyond even him. "Jōnin aren't the only ones who are allowed the luxury of unhappiness," he says coolly, and starts tugging off his shirt. He may be in a shitty, self-pitying mood but even at his lowest he has no intention of letting himself die of hypothermia.

"But you're never unhappy," Kakashi says, and Iruka pauses with his shirt halfway up his chest. Was there a hint of panic in his voice?

"If you think that then you're more naïve than I am," Iruka says, giving him a large, fake smile. "And if you listen to the village then that's _plenty_ naïve."

Kakashi frowns, and reaches out to touch Iruka's face. Iruka steps back and Kakashi lets his hand drop. "You're supposed to be happy," he repeats stubbornly. "I nee- I want you to be happy."

"I'm sorry, but I can't do that for you right now," Iruka says softly, shuffling down the hall in search of a towel. "Come back tomorrow and I'll try then."

Angry tears prick the insides of his eyelids as he scrubs his scalp roughly with the towel, trying to dry his hair. He can't smile for Kakashi because Kakashi is the main cause of his unhappiness.

He's an eighteen-year-old chūnin who regularly fucks up on missions and has no family and few friends. He's known as somewhat of a curse because all his teammates have died, and no one really wants to be assigned joint missions with him. And the Sandaime doesn't trust him enough to let him go on solo ones. It's not really that that bothers him, though. The thing he wants the most, more than anything in the world, is to have a lover. Somebody who can hold him and make things better just by being there. He wants Kakashi, but Kakashi isn't content to be anyone's lover and even if he did want one Iruka isn't stupid enough to believe that the Copy-nin would settle for someone like _him_.

"Stop," Kakashi commands, and takes the towel from him. Iruka relinquishes it easily, unable to muster the energy to fight back. He has no idea what Kakashi wants from him anymore, and has generally resigned himself to just giving what is asked, no more and no less.

The jōnin's long, cold fingers are in his hair, petting and untangling in an awkward, jumpy manner as if he is unsure what to do. The fingers trail downwards, smoothing the towel across his back and around his stomach in an odd parody of drying, and tug at the waistband of his pants. Iruka lets him remove them, along with his underwear, and doesn't resist being led to his bed. He'd thought he could, but he should have realized that saying no had never been an option. He always gives in in the end.

Kakashi steals a tube of lube from his bedside table and coats his fingers in it before reaching down to encircle Iruka's warm, flaccid member. Iruka closes his eyes, feels himself grow half hard. He feels empty, knowing that Kakashi will take him just because he can, because he's willing to let it happen.

Kakashi looks slightly puzzled at the lack of a reaction to his administrations and circles the tight pucker of his warm hole a few times with his finger before breaching it, watching his face carefully for a change of expression, or a sound of any kind. Iruka's face remains blank.

Iruka doesn't react to one finger, two, or three, and when Kakashi finally deems him ready and pushes inside the only acknowledgement he gets is a slight wince. He thrusts hard, twice, but Iruka still just lies there limply.

"What are you doing?" he snarls, leaning over Iruka with his hands either side of the brunet's head, panting.

Iruka's eyes flutter open, and he is genuinely puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"My cock is buried balls deep inside your ass and you're acting like you can't even feel it," Kakashi growls, "_That's_ what I mean."

"Oh." Iruka smiles apologetically. "I didn't think it mattered how I felt. Don't you just want a body to bury yourself in?"

"What?" Kakashi stares at him, the shock and confusion on his face visible even through the mask he refuses to take off. "Why would you – shit, Iruka."

He pulls out swiftly, making Iruka flinch, and rolls onto his back beside him. He stares at his hands in obvious distaste. "Is that what you think of me?" he asks quietly.

Iruka shrugs, and speaks quietly. "Am I supposed to think something else? You come here for sex and once you've taken that you leave. You never try to make it good for me so I figured it doesn't matter to you whether I enjoy it or not. You're only after a body, right?"

Kakashi clenches his fists so hard his blunt nails dig angry half-circles into his palms. "So you don't like it when I fuck you? You just pretend?"

"No, I like it," Iruka says softly. "I'll take whatever you're willing to give me. I'm just… tired right now. Like I said, come back tomorrow and I'll be happy for you then. You can take me now, if you really want, but I can't and won't promise happiness."

"Why not?" Kakashi demands, his whole body trembling minutely in barely restrained anger. "Why aren't you happy? You're not _allowed_ to be unhappy."

Iruka blinks. "Because if I'm unhappy I don't react the way you want me to when you fuck me?" he asks.

Kakashi's fist turns the headboard of Iruka's bed into splinters. "You baka Umino, don't you understand anything?" he snarls.

Iruka doesn't know what to say to that, because he really doesn't understand and Kakashi refuses to explain, so he says nothing. Kakashi exhales loudly, rolls over, and begins kissing Iruka's neck, his lips soft and wet even through the material of his mask. Iruka's entire body stiffens.

"What are you doing?" Iruka whispers, uncomfortable.

He has made it this far in their weird relationship simply because Kakashi is predictable. He arrives, speaks bluntly and precisely (if at all), fucks Iruka, then leaves. This routine helps stamp out any little tendril of hope that Iruka might have about Kakashi feeling anything for him (a blatant impossibility) and Iruka likes it this way. There's no use hoping for something that will never happen.

But this has never happened before. Kakashi doesn't _do_ kisses, doesn't show him any sort of affection, and the fact that his silver-haired crush is trailing his fingers along parts of his body that aren't his groin or his ass almost frightens him.

Kakashi lifts himself up on the backs of his fingers so he's hovering above Iruka, the movement stretching sinewy muscles tight across his chest and down his arms, reinforcing the chūnin's awareness that he is utterly outclassed. "You don't like it?" Kakashi asks, frowning.

"I don't understand it," Iruka corrects. He's so tired, and he wishes that Kakashi had picked any other night to do this.

"People in Icha Icha always like it," Kakashi offers, and Iruka can't tell if it's an accusation or an explanation. His day has been too long, too physically and emotionally exhausting for him to want to even try to understand what the crazy genius is going on about.

He tries to ignore it but Kakashi seems to be waiting for some sort of response so he says, self-pity flowing back through him like an old friend, "I am grateful enough for the fact that for some unknown reason you find me a worthy enough body to sink your cock into, so you don't have to worry about kisses. I don't expect you to pretend to care about me."

Suddenly he is wide-awake, because Kakashi has hit him and is staring at him with an expression that must mirror the shock he is feeling. He brings a hand up to his stinging cheek slowly, his eyes on the little he can see of Kakashi's face. The Copy Ninja has just _slapped_ him.

"Don't say that," Kakashi hisses, and there is more emotion in those three words than every word he has ever spoken to Iruka. "Don't ever say that."

Iruka scowls, and explodes. "What the hell am I supposed to say then? What do you want from me, Kakashi? I'm sick of games and I'm sick of feeling helpless. Just tell me what you want."

Kakashi's eye looks sad. "I told you," he says quietly. "What I want is for you to be happy." He lifts himself off the bed with the grace only an elite possesses and steps back into his pants, tightening the ties around his waist.

"For me to be happy, or for me to pretend to be happy?" Iruka asks his back bitterly. "Because I don't think you'd know the difference."

Kakashi turns and takes two steps back towards the bed. "Your smile," he says, "Is beautiful, when you mean it. You did it a lot when you were trying to make me your friend. It makes me feel warm here." He takes Iruka's hand and places it gently over the left side of his ribcage.

Iruka blinks slowly, trying desperately to process everything Kakashi has said and failing miserably. "Does this mean you like me?" he asks softly, almost afraid to hear the answer.

Kakashi stares at him like he's an idiot. "Why would I have sex with you if I didn't like you?"

Iruka gapes at him.

Kakashi glares. "Do you really think that little of me?"

"Well, you're –" _beautiful. Rich. Intelligent. Strong. Everything I'm not. _The words aren't coming, they're stuck in his throat and blurring in his head and he is much, much too tired for this, and suddenly this whole ridiculous misunderstanding seems hilarious. He laughs, hard, a desperate thinly edged sound interspersed with hiccups and what might be the brink of sobbing. Wiping tears out of his eyes and plastering on a grin he finishes, "You're way out of my league, you know that?"

"So?" Kakashi folds his arms across his chest and looks defiant, his calm exterior crumbling somewhat as Iruka resumes his hysterics. "I didn't – I didn't break you, did I?"

"Break me?" Iruka thinks this is probably the most amusing thing he has ever heard. "You can't really break something that's already broken."

"Maa?"

Iruka can see the white of Kakashi's eye. The jōnin is startled by the admission even though he doesn't seem to realize it himself, and has unconsciously shifted into an attack stance, physical offence being the only defense he has against things that are strange or unknown to him. Iruka finds it sad, and for the first time he truly realizes just how much Kakashi's prodigy status has deprived him of a normal life. It astonishes him to realize that Kakashi's method of showing him love – generally speaking, attacking him – is really, in the end, just another defense mechanism to protect himself from being rejected. He has never before considered that Kakashi could be just as afraid and unsure as he is.

"Kakashi," he says, and the name feels weird in his mouth, oddly personal in a way he isn't used to. "Kakashi, will you sleep with me?"

Kakashi's eye slides down his chest to stare at his uncovered groin, and Iruka is ungraciously reminded of his nudity. "Not like that." He scowls and tosses a pillow halfheartedly in the jōnin's direction. Kakashi just stands there and lets it hit him in the face, baffled.

"I'm tired." Iruka punctuates his sentence with a yawn. "I had a bad day and I'd like to –" he neatly sidesteps the word 'cuddle' "Share a bed with you. That's all." Without bothering to look at Kakashi he wiggles under the blankets, facing the wall. His heart is pounding so loud and fast in his ears that it feels like he's going to explode.

"But I'm dangerous," Kakashi says hesitantly, his lone eye boring a hole in the back of Iruka's skull.

Iruka snorts, and tries to calm his racing heart to sound blasé. "Just get in the damn bed."

He's expecting to be turned down, for Kakashi to turn and disappear, so he startles at the dip in the bed and the long, chilly fingers settling awkwardly on his waist. The fingers slink away at his surprised movement, and Iruka grabs for them to steal them back. Kakashi's body is rigid and slanted away from him, an angle and distance probably calculated down to the millimeter by the paranoid jōnin, so Iruka ruins it by shuffling back into his unwilling embrace, grasping the hand offered to him tightly. Kakashi's heart is beating just as fast as his.

"Stay like this," he murmurs sleepily. He'll probably be frightened by his own boldness in the morning, but for now it's enough to feel Kakashi's hand in his own, Kakashi's chest against his back. He has a new goal, now that he's starting to realize the jōnin actually does have some feelings for him. He is going to love Kakashi openly, and Kakashi is going to damn well _like_ _it._

"Iruka?" Kakashi whispers, his breath hot against the nape of Iruka's neck. "Are you sure about this?"

Iruka squeezes Kakashi's hand tightly, feels himself smile. He's feeling a little better now that he knows where he stands. "Kakashi?" he murmurs back, barely able to keep his eyes open, "Shut up and go to sleep."

**o0o**

Unrelated Comment_: If you're still looking for Hound's Release, a large portion of it is on AO3, the link to which is on my profile. To those who suggested Adult Fanfiction for it, it's not going there because 1. The website layout looks like it was designed by a ten-year-old and I can't be bothered learning my way around and 2. Everything on there seems to be pr0n, and while my work gets explicit sometimes it is not specifically created with the purpose of getting people off and I don't really intend for it to be seen that way. I'm not a fan of PWP. Thank you for the suggestions, though._


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